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49 dead last I saw. Only one attacker has been identified although at least four people were taken into custody.

I didn't know of that one, tbh.

Yeah, the death toll has increased.

I went on Twitter, since it's the best place to go to for updates when a big tragedy occur,s and unfortunately saw people sharing the video of one of the shooters inside a mosque aiming the gun and shooting the lying dead bodies. Pretty sickening.

It's surprising this happened in the country it did. If you told me something like this was gonna happen in a Western country soon and you told me to take a guess where, New Zealand wouldn't even cross my mind. I'd guess somewhere like the UK, USA, Germany or France.

I guess this is basically New Zealand's Breivik equivalent. Probably the biggest tragedy to happen in NZ asides from natural disasters. You never hear from that country on the news. NZ is known for the Lord of the Rings and the All-Blacks, basically.

Prowler wrote:It's surprising this happened in the country it did. If you told me something like this was gonna happen in a Western country soon and you told me to take a guess where, New Zealand wouldn't even cross my mind. I'd guess somewhere like the UK, USA, Germany or France.

Reportedly the shooter was Australian and initially only came to New Zealand to train. Many Australians are responding to this as if the massacre had happened in their own country.

"Richmond is a real scholar; Owen just learns languages because he can't bear not to know what other people are saying."--Margaret Lattimore on her two sons

Prowler wrote:It's surprising this happened in the country it did. If you told me something like this was gonna happen in a Western country soon and you told me to take a guess where, New Zealand wouldn't even cross my mind. I'd guess somewhere like the UK, USA, Germany or France.

Reportedly the shooter was Australian and initially only came to New Zealand to train. Many Australians are responding to this as if the massacre had happened in their own country.

But then there's this guy, Fraser Anning:

► Show Spoiler

Also, apparently one of the attackers said something about... pewdiepie?! Pewdiepie is now an inspiration for alt-righters? I don't know much about him since I've never cared about pewdiepie, but I remember a lot of controversy about him dropping "n-----" in a video of his. Could it be why?

Prowler wrote:Also, apparently one of the attackers said something about... pewdiepie?! Pewdiepie is now an inspiration for alt-righters? I don't know much about him since I've never cared about pewdiepie, but I remember a lot of controversy about him dropping "n-----" in a video of his. Could it be why?

No, it's because of his anti-Semitic jokes. He always claimed that they were wholly in jest but regardless white supremacists ate them up and began praising him for them, which eventually led some companies to cut ties with him.

Some of the early analyses of the attacker's rants (which I'm deliberately not reading) have said there's a lot of trollery involved. For instance, he identified Candace Owens, a young Black conservative pundit, as a major influence. Sincere statement or bad joke? Or something in-between? Given how throughly the alt-right has embraced irony in order to mock and discredit its critics, it's hard to say for sure.

"Richmond is a real scholar; Owen just learns languages because he can't bear not to know what other people are saying."--Margaret Lattimore on her two sons

linguoboy wrote:Queensland is like the Texas of Australia, in more ways than one.

from QLD, can confirm

No, it's because of his anti-Semitic jokes. He always claimed that they were wholly in jest but regardless white supremacists ate them up and began praising him for them, which eventually led some companies to cut ties with him.

He also followed a bunch of white supremacists on Twitter, recommended a white supremacist YouTuber, and started a feud with an Indian channel...

For instance, he identified Candace Owens, a young Black conservative pundit, as a major influence. Sincere statement or bad joke? Or something in-between? Given how throughly the alt-right has embraced irony in order to mock and discredit its critics, it's hard to say for sure.

From what I've heard they often joke among themselves about how they like more "moderate" figures ("alt-light" types) in their movement, but that they're too "extreme". Of course they mean the opposite.

Is there any doubt that Islamist terrorists will retaliate for Christchurch?

I certainly doubt it. I don't remember any Salafi militias "retaliating" for the Quebec or Munich shootings. In general they don't seem to care about us out in the diaspora, except as meat for recruitment.

The demands of Salafi jihad have generally been about "occupied Muslim lands", not about the status of Muslims living in the Dar-ul-Harb, especially on account of all the kuffr we do.

Is there any doubt that Islamist terrorists will retaliate for Christchurch?

Again, that's exactly out of the shooter's manifesto, and it is his wish. He had an entire chapter on how accelerationism is the best strategy for the white nationalist cause.

Looking at context ≠ apologizing for anyone

What context? By the shooter's own admission, New Zealand was the ideal target exactly because there weren't tensions there, which was problematic for the white nationalist narrative (that multiculturalism leads to repression of whites).

Let's finally call a spade a spade and stop coddling you and other "radical centrists": you are constantly apologising for white nationalism and neo-nazis. Whether you do it because you have fallen for the tricks in the "alt-right" playbook, or because you are one of them in stealth, it is irrelevant. This shooting once again showed that there's a very clear pipeline between nationalists and those who make excuses of them.

Yasna wrote:Great, now we've got an all-out war in our cities between white nationalist terrorists and Islamist terrorists.

No, we have another brutal massacre of innocent civilians. Maybe you somehow missed the part in every single report about how the victims were unarmed and had done nothing at all to attract such violence, but the rest of us didn't. Or maybe you weren't looking for it because you've already made up your mind about who in this world deserves to die just for existing and who doesn't.

I agree with the others. This is straight-up apologism for white nationalist terror.

"Richmond is a real scholar; Owen just learns languages because he can't bear not to know what other people are saying."--Margaret Lattimore on her two sons

Prowler wrote:Also, apparently one of the attackers said something about... pewdiepie?! Pewdiepie is now an inspiration for alt-righters? I don't know much about him since I've never cared about pewdiepie, but I remember a lot of controversy about him dropping "n-----" in a video of his. Could it be why?

No, it's because of his anti-Semitic jokes. He always claimed that they were wholly in jest but regardless white supremacists ate them up and began praising him for them, which eventually led some companies to cut ties with him.

Some of the early analyses of the attacker's rants (which I'm deliberately not reading) have said there's a lot of trollery involved. For instance, he identified Candace Owens, a young Black conservative pundit, as a major influence. Sincere statement or bad joke? Or something in-between? Given how throughly the alt-right has embraced irony in order to mock and discredit its critics, it's hard to say for sure.

Well, looks like pewdiepie is the type of person who doesn't think through things before opening his mouth, then.

Saim wrote:He also followed a bunch of white supremacists on Twitter, recommended a white supremacist YouTuber, and started a feud with an Indian channel...

I dunno why, but I lol'd. What's the reason behind their feud.

Yasna wrote:Great, now we've got an all-out war in our cities between white nationalist terrorists and Islamist terrorists.

In "our" cities? What are those "our cities" that you're referring to where an all-out war between white nationalist terrorists and islamic terrorists is happening?

Ironically enough, a New Zealand Islamist called for retaliation for the Quebec shooting. Christchurch is going to get a lot more attention and rile up a lot more people because of the scale of the attack though.

linguoboy wrote:No, we have another brutal massacre of innocent civilians. Maybe you somehow missed the part in every single report about how the victims were unarmed and had done nothing at all to attract such violence, but the rest of us didn't. Or maybe you weren't looking for it because you've already made up your mind about who in this world deserves to die just for existing and who doesn't.

I agree with the others. This is straight-up apologism for white nationalist terror.

Unarmed, innocent civilians are often brutally massacred in war*. Moreover, I called the perpetrators "terrorists". Not warriors, not crusaders, not even soldiers. That should give you a hint that I don't condone the terror of white nationalists or Islamists, and that I sympathize with the civilians murdered by each group.

*I don't want to get tied down in semantics though. "Conflict" is an apter term than "war" in this case.

md0 wrote:Again, that's exactly out of the shooter's manifesto, and it is his wish. He had an entire chapter on how accelerationism is the best strategy for the white nationalist cause.

Agreement with some of his ideas doesn't mean I agree with all or even most of what he said. I agree with you about a lot of the problems with capitalism, but that doesn't mean I agree with your fanciful ideas for overthrowing the system. Come on, this is Logic 101.

Let's finally call a spade a spade and stop coddling you and other "radical centrists": you are constantly apologising for white nationalism and neo-nazis. Whether you do it because you have fallen for the tricks in the "alt-right" playbook, or because you are one of them in stealth, it is irrelevant. This shooting once again showed that there's a very clear pipeline between nationalists and those who make excuses of them.

Simply that white nationalists are now playing the same game as the Islamist terrorists (large-scale massacre of civilians), and the two factions seem likely to terrorize our cities for some time to come. Think The Troubles on a global scale.

White nationalists, and indeed nationalists of any kind (at least if we're using "nationalist" with the definition that seems most common in the West), have been doing this from the beginning. There's nothing new about that at all, and it doesn't seem like a reason to fear a sudden upsurge in terrorism.

Sure, now you're restating your thesis as a metaphor, after some goalpost shifting ("called for retaliation"). You've already been shown why your prediction is baseless (in terms of, you know, what is actually happening and has happened; if you want to stay within the realm of thought experiments, inaccurate metaphors and extrapolations based on extrapolations be my guest), and your framing is incorrect, so I don't have anything else to say to you.

vijayjohn wrote:and it doesn't seem like a reason to fear a sudden upsurge in terrorism.

I unfortunately don't think we can rule out copycats of any ideological persuasion, I don't think any of us should be surprised if this keeps happening. That doesn't mean that those attacks will happen according to the frame Yasna has suggested, though. The idea of an armed conflict between Salafi jihad and neo-Nazism (rather than various far-right groups attacking soft targets) sure might be a nice wet dream for nationalists, but it's not what's happening.

Prowler wrote:I dunno why, but I lol'd. What's the reason behind their feud.

The stated reason is that it's run by a "corporation" and that Pewdiepie (a millionaire who makes trashy videos for preteens) represents "independent creators" on YouTube. But of course it degenerated into racist comments by a lot of his fanbase pretty quickly.

He even made a pretty pathetic "hip hop" music video with absolutely stellar, totally-not-xenophobic, lyrics such as:

"you India, you lose [...]I got nine-year-olds of worlds (???) so hold your defecation [...]Motlu Patlu, what the fuck is that even supposed to mean?/your language (sic) sounds like it come (sic) from the mumble rap community"